Thanks to television shows like What Not to Wear and Timm Gunn’s Guide to Style, I’ve recently discovered the joys of using a tailor’s services. If you know me well, you might wonder why I use a tailor when I have half a diploma in fashion design. Let’s just say I wasn’t paying particularly close attention when we studied hemming and other alterations.

I found an excellent little shop in a nearby mall. It’s run by this couple from Eastern Europe. He sews, she works the counter. They have charming accents and are always nicely dressed. At least by my lights, which means they don’t wear torn sweat pants and stained T-shirts. They get many visitors who go into the back with them and whenever I come along I have the vague sense that I’m interrupting something.

First I brought in pants to be hemmed. That went well, so I took in some inexpensive jeans that fit everywhere except the waist. The tailor did such a terrific job on that I now bring in just about everything because almost anything can be made to look better with a slight alteration.

In short, I have become a tailoring junky.

I have also started to sense a certain wryness in the tailor and his wife when I come along bearing my T-shirt that could use a tuck here and there or the skirt with the hem that isn’t quite right.

Like a lot of addicts trying to distract people from noticing all-too-obvious-addictive behaviour, I’ve started talking too much.

“Oh, hi!” I say, too brightly, when the woman comes to the counter. “It’s just me again! Heh, heh.”

She smiles but I’m sure I see judgment there. Maybe even pity. Did she just exchange a glance with her husband? I’m almost certain he gave his head a small shake.

I start making excuses.

“I know it’s really, you know, kind of weird to bring in this old turtleneck, but it hangs too low. And maybe I’ll wear it again if I get it altered. I really love the colour. You know, it’s so hard to get a turtleneck that’s the right colour. Important too, because you are basically wearing a colour right on your face, or at least at your face.” I start to wind down. “Yeah, so, I just thought I’d bring it in to see what you could do for me. Uh, I was wondering if those Fruit of the Looms I brought in last week are ready by any chance?”

Yesterday, on my trip to drop off some trackpants to have the waist band moved down an inch, I complimented the always stylish woman on her dress.

“Suzy Shier,” she said. “Fifteen dollars.”

Which made me think about the alteration I was having done for $20.

That set me off. “Oh, that’s great. Good for you! What a super deal. You know, I get most of the clothes I bring in here on sale. Some of them are practically free. Which is why I don’t mind having them altered. It’s still cheaper than, you know, having clothes that don’t fit. Like these track pants, for instance. How much do I really save I look like I’m wearing diapers? Nothing, right? Not that your dress looks like you’re wearing… never mind. Did you have it altered or did it always just look like that?”

Sigh. And so it goes.

I suspect that my career as a tailoring addict is going to either be short-lived or I’m going to have to get more than one dealer.

Here is one item in my wardrobe that does not require any alteration. My Bog boots, a birthday present from James, are perfection just as they are.

to Stephan and Liz for their very funny entries which won the copies of Through the Wardrobe! Your books will go in the mail this week. Thanks to everyone who entered.

I would also like to thank the Alice, Charmene, Tara and Alex and the rest of the Port Moody Secondary School Book Club and their teacher-sponsors for inviting me to visit! The turnout was excellent and the questions were amazing.

Also, in spite of what my shirt might suggest, I’m not pregnant with triplets and about to enter my third trimester. I can see from photo above that the shirt was a mistake. Let me thank the Book Club for not asking the obvious. I’m not sure what that banner above us (which matches my shirt so very well) said. Perhaps something along the lines of “Never Settle For Less Than You Paid For Unless You are Dealing with Quantities of Shirt Fabric.” When you are looking at this photo, I encourage you to focus on the girls, who look entirely fabulous.

advice column is up!

Because yesterday was Earth Day, I will post about it today.

There is in our little stretch of paradise on Vancouver Island, which is very rapidly being paved over to put up parking lots and huge tract houses, a particularly lovely resort. It’s called Yellow Point Lodge. I wrote a profile of it for Western Living Magazine about four years ago. The pull quote the magazine used was: “Staying at Yellow Point is a bit like going to visit your favourite grandfather at his home located somewhere between the Adirondacks and oh, say, Elsinore.”

I’ve just read that the proprietor, Richard Hill, has put the land into a trust so it will never be developed. I take my hat off to him.

My friend Mary and I used to visit Yellow Point Lodge on a certain weekend each year to celebrate our birthdays. One year, we couldn’t make it and we lost our spot. Seriously. That’s how Yellow Point works. At the end of each year, you rebook for the following year. If you can’t make it, someone else moves into “your” place. We have been trying to get a new spot for two years. Without success. But the marvelous thing is that we are now assured that we will have many years to try and get a new weekend.

In other post-Earth Day news, I’ve just finished watching Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. They are drawing ever closer to Earth but I can’t help worrying that they might be a little disappointed when they get here to discover China belching out smoke from innumerable coal-fired plants, the rainforests and boreal forests completely gone. I think that might make Admiral Odama sort of mad. I, for one, don’t want to have to deal with an enraged Odama, especially after he’s had such a long journey. So let’s do our part, people! Keep it green for Odama!

are a useful tool for getting out of nerve-wracking adventures…

These photos were taken at 6:00 this morning. April 19th.

I know when to give up! You could never say I didn’t.

Frank is unhappy because his winter clothes have been packed away.

Next year we’ll get them. We’ll be the most competitive trail riders around. Within reason.

at the time.

For some unknown reason I signed Tango and I up for a course tomorrow. It’s an introduction to competitive trail riding. That’s right. Competitive trail riding. It’s not unusual for me to be hit with sudden enthusiasms for things (i.e. quilting, marathon running, baking cakes with fresh coconut as a primary ingredient, interpretive dance). But usually I come to my senses before I commit.

This time it looks as though I am going to have to follow through. And as you might expect, I’m sort of freaking out. (But quietly, so as not to spook my horse).

Tango excels at going around in circles at different speeds as well as eating grass. We sometimes go on trails. These are wide, groomed park trails that run for oh, say, a couple of miles. Tomorrow we will be going on a 12 mile ride in the wilderness. I hardly even drive 12 miles.

Also, I have to haul Tango to the ride, a journey of about an hour, which is quadruple the length of any trip I’ve done with the trailer so far. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be freakishly cold out. There could be cougars around. Not to mention water hazards. Tango hates getting his feet wet. I hate being mauled by cougars. And landing on my face in a creek when my horse decides he’s had enough of this B.S. The other riders are probably adventurous and brave. They probably have sturdy, sure-footed horses. I have the most delicate 1300 pound flower on all of Vancouver Island.

Sigh. I am not an adventurous person. I consider changing coffee brands to be quite a shakeup.

Will let you know how it goes. I guess I will take my inspiration from this guy. I don’t think you’d hear him crying and moaning about having to go on a trail ride. No sir, I don’t think you would. As he said after capturing a man police had been chasing for ten days: “If you try to do something, shit will happen. If you don’t try to do it, nothing will happen.” Exactly. I just sort of hope the shit that happens isn’t, like, bad.

P.S. Thanks for the excellent entries to win a copy of Through the Wardrobe. I’m going to end the contest on Monday. If you are a Narnia fan, don’t forget to see the blog below for details of how to enter.

My spirit animal

Tango inspects Susan’s ear to see where her brain went

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus today. Why?

Well, because I fell asleep while reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel last night. My palm was resting on the corner of the book and when I finally woke up, there was a deep and painful welt on my hand. Similar to the one Jesus had. Only mine was cause by hardcover Wodehouse and not a spike. Today, my hand is still sore and it looks as though I have a mild case of stigmata and I can’t stop humming Personal Jesus, perhaps the best cowboy video of all time. Horses, chickens and Depeche Mode. Hello, heaven!

In other news, I am running a little contest to give away two copies of Through the Wardrobe: Your Favorite Authors on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, edited by Herbie Brennan and Leah Wilson. It contains great essays by a host of fabulous writers.

All you have to do to enter is write to me and tell me about a time you felt a connection with your personal Jesus. Or Buddha. Or Yaweh. Or Ishvara. (C.S. Lewis thought a lot about his personal Jesus. He did not, however, have the benefit of a Depeche Mode song to help him with this thinking, which is too bad.) Don’t worry, there is no connection too tenuous, as you can see from the anecdote above. “I walked past a church once” will do the trick. The best two entries will get the books.

Okay. I have to go and watch Depeche Mode try and ride again.

Oh yeah, send your personal deity reflections to: andfurthermore@shaw.ca

For anyone who has experienced the bitter sting of rejection.

And I don’t mean the boots.

Like just about anyone else who spends any time online, I have seen the stories about the six girls in Florida who filmed themselves beating up another girl while two young men stood guard. The girls were apparently upset because their target had been trash talking them on Myspace. They planned to post the tape of the beating on Youtube. I’m not sure what they thought that would achieve. No, scratch that. I do know and it makes me feel like jumping out a window.

I haven’t linked to the video, which was released by the police department, because I don’t want it stinking up my website. The victim’s parents have apparently said that they think Myspace and the other social networking sites are to blame. I hate to break it to them, but teen girls were brutalizing one another, physically and psychologically, long before the Internet.

This kind of thing bums me out to the point of despair and is part of what inspired my new book, Getting the Girl. The book is a comedy, but it’s also about how teens (and adults, for that matter) can go right over the edge with very little provocation.

I hope the girl who was attacked is recovering and that she realizes that one day soon she’ll be out of high school and able to leave all this behind. I also hope her attackers are going straight into intensive therapy for whatever ails them.

And now I’m going to go bake the fanciest cupcake I can in an effort to forget how ugly life can be.

The avalanche of advice continues…

Ask a Juby